Show me your Sub Enclosures - non free air

[Markk]

Anyone have sub enclosures in your boats that are working well?

My boat's previous owner left this box for me. He stripped the driver and amp, but left the box. I'm trying to decide what pieces to buy for my audio upgrade, but before I went with JL 10" IB mounted like most are doing I figured I'd load a driver in this box and see what it would do.

A couple notes on the box. It was stuffed under the port(passenger) seat on my 242LS. Driver faced rear and port fired up into fiberglass under seat. No port opening was made into cabin. Box was deskgned to split in half to fit down into cavity. Screws and sealed applied after in place.

I'm in the concert audio business so I have easy access to test parts. I loaded a 15" 500w driver in the box and wired it up to a crown ITEC amp for testing purposes. When the seat cushion above batteries was open the sub sounded pretty good. As soon as seat placed back the sub was greatly muted and rattled the boat chassis pretty bad.

I think the builder made his mistake in porting up straight into seat bottom. If he would have ported it to left or right and created an exit point to cabin it would probably perform much better. Since I have the parts I'm thinking of doing a test with port firing into open wall cavity and temporarily removing glove box to create an exit point.

Any thoughts on sub enclosures from the forum members who are in car/boat audio profession? Should I explore enclosures more, or just bail out to free air?

What enclosures are installed in your boats that you are happy with?

 

[Coheeba]

I am not a professional audio guy however, I have been thinking about building an enclosure for my 10" JL. It is installed in the stbd side rear seat box. I think if you have the sub fully enclosed in a compartment it will not work well. The whole thing with a sub or any speaker is it moves air. It needs to have an exit point into the cabin. Also the size of the enclosure is important. JL has recommended sizes in their manuals.

 

[Trevor Shipman]

We have a kicker marine grade bazooka tube. Man that thing hits hard! We tucked way under sort of where the stern back corner goes to the rear deck. Unused space for us really. Highly recommend as opposed to cutting holes for exposed bass.

 

[Drift Away]

I have 2 JL 10's in boxes. One on either side of the boat. Still cut the hole for a little air flow and cover the hole with the grills. The boxes i uar are nothing fancy. Just some rino lined $50 box from amazon. In my option the box made it sound much better. You can feel the bass more and it keep that speaker under the seat that only adds to the bass.

 

[Coheeba]

You also have the added benefit of an air vent in the compartment.

 

[zelone]

I installed a jbl self contained 10" marine sub under the throttle controls, drivers side. Really impressed with the sound and minimal space it required. I did need to make a spacer to keep it from hitting inside of hull.

 

[BenThere]

Here's a picture of mine I just made for our 212x

 

[viggen]

Best way is if you want to use existing box, figure out the box volume and also port frequency. Once that's determined figure out what driver would work best. Some subs are better then others in regards to working ok or not with a ported box.

Depending on size you could also simply plug the port. Depending on tuning frequency that might be the best option

Hardest thing with IB in a boat (or any car, home etc) is I would assume most would simply cut a hole to mount the driver under the seats. IB to sound good needs a sealed enclosure thus every opening in that seat compartment (where the seat cushion rests on the top of the storage area) needs to be air tight. If this isn't done the front and back of drivers sound wave will cancel itself hurting part of the frequency response. Properly done they can be amazing.... however IB is extremely difficult to properly do especially in a boat.

 

[Markk]

I installed a jbl self contained 10" marine sub under the throttle controls, drivers side. Really impressed with the sound and minimal space it required. I did need to make a spacer to keep it from hitting inside of hull.

Can you show us a photo?